Our Air Age Speeds Ahead
That Distant Lake Where the Fish Are Biting Is Easy to Reach by Air
ioss-l'ix
Assembling the collapsible canoe brought with them in their own plane, this couple prepares for a day's
fishing far from home. Equipped with pontoons, light planes can use a body of water for landing.
gives instructions to the planes by radiotele
phone. As the planes approach the field they
are picked up on the scope of a shorter-range
radar. Then an operator "talks them down,"
watching each plane on the radarscope as it
comes down toward the runway and telling
the pilot how to alter his course to stay on
the correct path to land safely.
More amazing than either ILS or GCA,
perhaps, is Teleran (Television-Radar Air
Navigation), which enables a pilot actually
to see himself come down. A radar set on
the ground picks up all aircraft in its vicinity
and shows them on its scope.
A continuous view of the scope is sent by
television to each plane. Each pilot sees on
his television screen little spots of light that
represent his and all other planes near him,
with his own marked in a special way, all
moving across a map.
On the screen, too, he sees a line that directs
him to the proper runway, and he can find
his way down by watching the movements
of the spot representing his own plane as
he glides to a landing. Teleran is still under
test.
To guide airplanes more surely from one
field to another, the CAA is rapidly blanketing
the United States with new radio range sta
tions operating on very high frequency. On
a map these radio ranges look like a series of
wheels with 90 spokes, each wheel overlapping
those around it. The hub of each wheel is a
radio sending station on a mountain or other
high point. Each "spoke" is a radio beam
being sent out in a certain direction.
A pilot flying, say, from Chicago north
westward to Minneapolis follows the spoke
of the Chicago radio range that points most
directly toward Minneapolis, to a point where
it overlaps with another spoke that extends
out southeast from the Minneapolis "wheel."
Following two overlapping spokes or beams
in this way, a pilot can find his way unerringly
between any two points in the United States.
A right-left needle on a dial in the cockpit
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